ed till they are lost, like the prismatic colors, in a ray of pure and perfect light in the Missionary work, though divided, they are not discordant; but, like the same colors, displayed and harmonized in the rainbow, they form an arch of glory ascending on the one hand from earth to heaven, and on the other descending from heaven to earth-a bow of promise, a covenant of peace, a sign that the storm of wrath is passing away, and the Sun of righteousness with healing in his wings breaking forth on all nations."

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Another poem now issues from his pen-"The World before the Flood;" and the fresh fame which it brings to him he feels to be a new temptation. How worse than worthless," he writes to the Rev. Dr. Raffles, "how profane, were the exercise of my powers on sacred and solemn themes for my own glory! Yet such is the deceitfulness of the human heart, that in its holiest offerings (I speak from the experience of mine), it cannot forget itself and its own merits, nor help being pleased in the eyes of man to divide with its Maker that glory which its language ascribes to Him. This is the peculiarly-besetting sin of poets as well as of preachers: I said sin, though I should have said temptation; for it is impossible to avoid the temptation, but it is possible to avoid the sin by continually watching unto prayer against it."

It is a touching utterance which one of our poets has given to the heart's longings in certain of its phases:

James Montgomery, though still sad and downcast moments of self-inspection, is already enjoying light and the life of God. The

man who has lead

besetting" on his knees to crucify that temptal" is once more in confidence at the feet of the Cried, "begging himself rich.” At a Missionary festiv held in Sheffield (May, 1814), he spoke with gat fervor. "The Lord,"

said he, “has created'

the disciples of Christ not aly loving as brethren, but those who from some diffrence of opinion before acted separately, now uniting a one purpose to pro

a w thing in the earth'—

And, very

mote their Master's cause among men." solemnly he added:—" There is danger in running with the multitude to do evil, when, amidst the contagion of example, and the tumult of publicity, the sinner seems to lose his personal responsibility in the crowd, and the guilt, divided among thousands, appears to attach to none, though, in truth, it attaches to each as if each acted alone! There is danger also in running with the multitude to do good-danger in trying to escape from ourselves among the people of God. We may have a name among Christians we may be affected by the external solemnity of divine worship; we may delight in the joy and animation of meetings like this; and yet be devoid of the spirit and power of godliness." At the close of the festival he was persuaded so far to overcome his anxieties as to sit down with the assembled friends and brethren at the Lord's Table. And, when it was over, he was not ashamed to write in the "Iris" concerning it :-"It was a season of humble and holy joy, such as will be remembered even in heaven with gratitude." The words were evidently the expression of his own personal thanksgiving. At the end of the year he was formally readmitted into the Moravian fellowship at Fulnec, rejoicing once again to "devote himself to the Lord and to His people."

CHAPTER V.

"The best of all the well-doings' on this gloomy planet. Angels themselves can be doing nothing better, wherever they are at work ; though they work in a grander style than mortals."-FOSTER.

A yearning-"Greatest and best work"-The "proxy"-" Wherefore this waste?"-Greenland-“ Civilize and Christianize"-The savago -Cowper-"My Father"-Nature and its God-Wordsworth.

In one of his sonnets, George Herbert thus articulates the Christian heart's desire, the Christian's missionary yearnings:

"Lord, I will mean and speak thy praise,
Thy praise alone!

My busy heart shall spin it all my days."

And again :

"Wherefore I sing. Yet, since my heart,

Though pressed, runs thin;

Oh, that I might some other hearts convert,

And so take up at use good store;

That to thy chests there might be coming in
Both all my praise, and more!"

With James Montgomery the missionary enterprise now takes its place as "the greatest and the best work in the world-the work of God himself."

"Pray, do not disappoint me," he writes, urging the attendance of a speaker at a missionary meeting; "I am not alone in this request; I am the proxy of six hundred millions of pagans-and how many Jews, Mahometans, and Christians, verily I know not."

And, some months later, in a literary Review, he writes:"It is a fact awfully illustrative of the essential depravity of the heart, that, while the greatest energies of the greatest minds-the utmost means of the most enlightened nations-are, more or less, continually exercised in achieving the destruction of their species and the desolation of nature, the labors of the missionary are by numbers treated as visionary, and by others deemed expensive." And he adds :"In Greenland alone-a country overlooked by all the philanthropists of Europe, except by a few Danish or Moravian missionaries-more good has been done to mankind, and, certainly, more glory given to God, than has been directly accomplished by all the wars of Christendom, from the days of Gustav as Adolphus to those of Napoleon Buonaparte."

His clear head and sound heart give to his trumpet a not uncertain sound. "The wisdom of man," he writes, "says, 'first civilize barbarians, and then Christianize them; and the wisdom of man has proved itself 'foolishness' in every experiment of the kind which it has made, though it must be confessed that it has been too prudent or too selfish to make many. The wise counsel of God is very different.